TOPIC: thoughts on kinect and amulet

Hey guys I tried the kinect software today for the first time. I am an avid amulet user, normally with the remote software. I ended up re installing the remote software for obvious reasons. The remote software has all the perks that one would get when buying the application.

Honestly, I think that kinect/Amulet is fantastic. I would love to use a version of the software that had all the perks of the remote software. I have used the kinect with my xbox for things like netflix and I have always thought it was great I could just call out what I wanted (play, pause etc.) from the couch. It would be great to see the full version of kinect for amulet.

So plus one here!

I also realize that with windows 8 WMC has become a different entity, and I hope that it doesn't deter the amulet team from creating the windows seven WMC kinect product.

Thanks again!

Huge Fan here!!
Ben

PS. I think that it will be a while before I upgrade to Win 8, even if M$ gives away deals, because I love WMC so much. I know that the WMC commuity is small, which is why I think M$ has decided to go the direction it has with WMC, however I know that the people in the community would also love, and have been waiting for an WMC kinect software. (and because the community is small, I have talked to at least half of 'em. lol).

+1 from me also!
Been a few months since we have heard anything from the Amulet team on the status of this project. I really hope you continue the good work and that you support 360 kinects in a full version.

We haven't seen the level of interest in this Kinect for Mediacenter solution that would justify the effort in developing the features to the same level as the Amulet remote. With Microsoft showing signs of doing no further developement on the Mediacenter platform and their insistance that anyone with an xbox360 Kinect would still need to buy a more expensive Kinect for windows to use a commercialised solution of this, further developement doesn't look like a good bet (at least not on Mediacenter, XBMC on the other hand might be a little more promising once the PVR branch goes mainstream ).
Steve

Is there a way to have the toggle/ usb for the remote always think the remote is listening? For instance, when I. Install the sdk for xbox kinect and change the settings for recorded devices in windows, the kinect will work with the remote software. But only if I pick up the remote once and let it start listening. Then I have to pick up the remote each time, put it down and then I can us the kinect microphone array to command amulet. If I could tell amulet that the microphone on the remote is always listening, then come up with a prefix command, it will work...i think...

I think that is a real shame as most of the groundwork seems to have been achieved already.

Personally I don't think the product has had enough exposure in media center circles, I only stumbled upon it when searching for a competitor product that is not at the level you guys are at now. I have mentioned it on a few forums and had positive comments back.

I think that the real problem is that people dont want to invest in buying the expensive hardware until a stable product is released and are wary as to how well it will work without being able to test it further.

How much work would it take to add basic navigation and searching of recorded tv, channel changes etc seeing as you already have developed this for the remote?

I have had a play adding custom commands and can navigate to a few other media center pages like Pictures and video etc and with a little work this could be very powerful.

Would you consider releasing the code to the community to develop further if you do decide to abandon it?

Alright, I tried some things with the regular amulet remote program, with the kinect sdk installed. Here what I know. I peppers my remote up right so the red light was on constantly. Then I used the windows recording devices setting to switch to the kinect as default listening device. When the room is quiet it works like a charm, but the second I started to play media, it was a yelling match between me and Paul!! So no...his doesn't work well. But I has to try. I must admit that having a solid microphone array pick up what I am laying it the room does beat picking up a remote, but the remote is the reason that amulet can market the product. It can't misunderstand what is being said a couple inches from the microphone. I hope that on my life time Microsoft makes it possible to have microphone arrays in my home so each room has the ability to pick up what I am saying... It's close...

If you use the full version of the Amulet Software with a Kinect, you will see very poor results, the results will be comparable to just plugging in any old very cheap microphone. The reason for that is that you need to be using the Kinect SDK to access the Kinect to avail of all the Kinect audio smarts. It's those audio smarts that make the Amulet voice Kinect work so well. The smarts I'm talking about are beamforming (to automatically focus in on the user and exclude secondary sound sources), digital noise suppression and echo cancellation (so music playing through the speakers is subtracted from the sound that gets picked up and fed to the recogniser).I have a video detailing some of the technology here